


A Meeting In Besaid

by 13thSyndicate



Series: Rose-Mallow [1]
Category: Final Fantasy X
Genre: Alternate Universe, Braska being a wonderful human being, Braska is a Good Man, Braska loves Besaid, Braska's group on their journey, First time in Besaid, Gen, Ordinary People, Pre-Canon, This is who Braska was fighting for, half Al Bhed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-10
Updated: 2017-06-10
Packaged: 2018-11-12 09:41:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11159253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/13thSyndicate/pseuds/13thSyndicate
Summary: “You’re a Summoner?” asked the child with a stare split between blue and green. “Are you going to make Sin go away?”Braska meets a child in Besaid who reminds him why he journeys.





	A Meeting In Besaid

The sound of waves, lapping rhythmically against a porcelain beach, carried all the way up the cliffs, bathing the village in a soothing ambience that belied the turmoil that had embroiled the world of the modern day. Salt breezes gently played with the fabric of wood-framed tent huts and the bright clothing of villagers, rushing to and fro, busy with the everyday tasks of fishing, hunting, gathering, weaving – things that not even the arrival of such an important personage as a Summoner could interrupt. Come storm, Spawn, or Sin itself, these things would experience little more than an inconvenient pause.

Breathing in the sea wind, the Sumoner in question, wrapped in heavy robes impractical for the island heat, decided that at this moment, he’d rather be nowhere else.

“What do you think?” he asked, turning to his two companions with a smile. They had been standing patiently, waiting for their Summoner to finish greeting the island, the seaside; a courtesy to a man who was set to give everything for the service of Spira. He trio was an odd one, even for a Summoner party, three men who, by appearances, couldn’t be more different. Both Guardians glanced at each other.

“It’s… quaint,” spoke the first, a muscular, dark-haired youth shrouded in a heavy, red coat. “Besaid is the smallest temple of Yevon to house an aeon, you know.” He glanced around the village, his features impassive. “You wouldn’t believe that Sin destroyed this place less than ten years ago, looking at it now.”

“Seriously?” asked the other with clear surprise – and respect. “Yeah, I never woulda guessed.” He was dark-skinned, like the islanders, and dressed in odd clothing; wild hair and a careless beard, combined with the large tattoo on his bare chest, made him seem almost feral compared to the immaculate arrogance of the red-coated youth or the Summoner’s enfolding robes. Shaking his head, he turned his face into the wind and took a deep breath, wistful peace softening his features for just a moment. “The place is barely big enough to be on a _map_ ,” he muttered, “but this wind… it’s just like home.”

“In Zanarkand?” snorted the younger Guardian with poorly-concealed skepticism. The wild man shrugged.

Before the conversation could continue, a child’s high voice split the air.

“Mama! Mama, there’s someone new here!”

“Korrin! Wait!”

The sound f running feet accompanied a small shape, streaking across the village from the door of one of the huts. The Summoner turned to look at the child who’d taken a fistful of his robes, a small boy no older than six or seven. His hair, unlike that of most of the village boys, was long, held back from his face in a tail similar to that worn by the red-clad Guardian who’d traveled with him, and a pair of small braids framed his young face.

“Korrin!” called the second voice again, the tones of a worried mother, sending a stab of sad nostalgia through the robed man. “Korrin! Please, don’t…”

She stopped short at the sight of the Summoner party.

“Y-you…” She cleared her throat. “You m-must be Lord Braska. Please, forgive my son.” She dipped into the ritual gesture of the prayer bow, honoring Yevon’s chosen Summoner with more fear than reverence, but Braska waved her gesture away with a smile meant to reassure.

“He is no trouble,” he said, kneeling before the boy, still smiling, getting on the child’s level. The young boy looked up, wide-eyed, and another chill swept itself through Braska’s soul at that serious, respectful gaze.

“You’re a Summoner?” asked the child with a stare split between blue and green. “Are you going to make Sin go away?”

For a moment, Braska couldn’t answer, his thoughts in a distant place, on a similar pair of mismatched eyes, his heart in his throat. He nodded, swallowing down a sudden wave of grief and homesickness that threatened to overwhelm him.

“Yes,” he said, and the conviction in his voice was ironclad. “Yes, I am.”

The bright mile he received was enough to make his vision blur, and he looked away, only to meet the eyes of the boy’s harried mother. Those eyes were pleading, praying – worried – and in a single moment, Braska understood with perfect clarity the woman’s fear of Summoners. Memory replaced that serious, blue-eyed gaze with a pair of eyes he had once known all too well, crystalline green and branded with the spiral mark of Yevon’s disdain, set to sparkling radiance by the sunlight that also glistened and danced in blonde hair, caught up in a mess of braids that seemed set to fall apart at any moment. What had she been smiling at that day? Some joke that had passed her lips, perhaps, or the small-mindedness of those who whispered words of cruelty in her wake.

Heretic.

Al Bhed scum.

The woman he’d loved.

This woman, like him, had once been entranced by eyes of spiral-stained green, eyes that her son bore an echo of with him always – just like his Yuna.

“He’s a special child, isn’t he?” Braska asked, and the woman gathered her son back to her with all of a mother’s fierceness.

“He is,” she said. “More than you know.” She dropped her gaze and swallowed. “They say he has the Talent.”

The Talent. Braska’s heart broke inside. Such a heavy burden for such a small set of shoulders to carry.

“I will give everything I have to bring the Calm.” _So that you also don’t have to say goodbye to the child you love someday_ , he thought.

“L-Lord Summoner?” asked the boy, and he glanced back down at the child.

“What is it?” he asked as kindly as he could.

“Do you really think I could be a Summoner?” asked that small voice quietly. “Even if you bring the Calm? Even…” The child broke off, withdrawing back towards his mother, clinging to her skirt.

“Even?” prompted the Summoner, amazed at the levelness of his voice.

“They… they say bad things about my daddy sometimes” he said, as if confiding a secret. “That he’s a h… here…. a bad person,” the boy substituted in place of the longer word the villagers had surely actually used. “They say that I shouldn’t become a Summoner unless I’m going to die for Spira.”

The flash of anger across Braska’s normally-serene features surprised both the boy’s mother and his Guardians, and he reached out to take the child’s hands in his.

“Listen to me,” he said. “Your name is… Korrin, isn’t it?” The boy nodded, and he continued. “Listen to me, Korrin. You can do anything you want to do. Be anyone you want to be. If you want to be a Summoner to Send the dead in Calm, if the Calm ends in your lifetime, Yevon forbid, and you decide to pilgrimage, if you wish to never touch your power and become a fisherman or a Blitzball player or a priest or a Crusader or a Guardian, do it. Listen to your heart, no matter what the voices of others tell you. The only one who can decide your destiny is you.”

Korrin looked up at the Summoner with wide eyes and nodded, and Braska smiled at him, no Summoner’s smile this time but a real one. The boy’s mother was looking at him with a grateful expression, and Braska nodded solemnly at her. Standing up and shaking out his robes, he bowed the prayer bow to the serious-eyed woman.

“Yevon bless you and your son,” he said quietly, before turning to his Guardians. “Auron, Jecht, come. We’ll challenge the Cloister in the morning, so we should get all the rest we can.” His attendants – his Guardians – his _friends_ – nodded their assent, and the Summoner party began to leave.

Suddenly, though, Braska found himself stopped by a hand on the sleeve of his robe.

“Why?” the young mother asked, almost desperately, tears in her serious eyes.

Braska’s smile was sad and far away; he looked through the young mother at the ghost of spiral green eyes and the solemn, crying face of a seven-year-old girl.

“My daughter, Yuna,” he said quietly. “She’s about Korrin’s age.” He turned away from mother and ghosts all at once. “Her mother… her mother was a ‘heretic’ too.”

He didn’t turn back towards the silence behind him as he gathered his Guardians and left – but he would remember the two of them until the end.

**Author's Note:**

> This is technically the prologue to a long-form fic I want to write but can't figure out how to start, but you can ignore that aspect if you wish. I like theorizing about Spira and the people who live there - and what might happen if things had happened differently.


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